No refund, even though she did almost no work in 6 weeks.
Jessica’s pricing is broken down into three installments. The first is $1500. After seeing so many positive reviews on her profile for The Knot and hearing the promises she made, we felt comfortable paying it. Hopefully it is the worst decision we make in our entire wedding planning process.
Before we paid the first installment, Jessica was quick to respond to her email. Almost immediately after paying, we started hearing from her less regularly. We told her we were interested in having our wedding at a summer camp, as it would allow us to spend more time with our guests during the weekend. She told us that she would be sending a list of venues five Monday or Tuesday “at the latest.” When we didn’t hear from her by Tuesday, we were a little surprised but unbothered, considering how ambitious the timeline was. On Thursday, she emailed us that the venue search was “taking a little longer than planned.” We checked in the following Thursday, mentioning a camp we’d like her to add to the list. Four days later, she explained that the camps she had reached out to were slow to respond because it was the off-season, but that she was “finalizing your first list of venues to take a look at and will send over this week. But I will reach out to your friend's camp and get the info!”
Eight days later, we checked in again and heard from her three days after that with three camps. One was the camp we had asked her to add to the list. She said she hadn’t heard from them yet but she wanted us to “look a little deeper into their website and see if this is something you're interested in.” The other two did not meet our criteria for location or date. We responded soon after, explaining that we had some concerns about her progress and that we would hope for more communication moving forward. We also asked if she could share the list of all camps she had reached out to.
After not hearing from her four days later, we checked in again mentioning that we were “fairly frustrated” that we hadn’t heard back. The next day, she said, “I apologize that you are frustrated” and “I do apologize you are unhappy.” She explained that she doesn’t respond to emails during the weekends or after 4pm. She sent us four more camps or “camp-like venues.” (One was Cedar Lakes Estate, a famous wedding venue that is astronomically far out of our budget.) We asked if this was the full extent of her research. She said, “This is the list of camp venues who have responded. There are many who have yet to respond - would you like those as well?” We said yes and she sent over 9 more. Four of them did not meet our criteria.
During a phone call, we explained to her that we were disappointed in her progress thus far and her lack of communication. Her excuse was that camps don’t typically do weddings. We told her that we’d like either a full or partial refund, considering that she had not met the terms of our agreement. She had demonstrated poor communication, a lack of problem-solving abilities, and (potentially) dishonesty. She refused without offering any alternatives.
After we voided our contract with Jessica and started our own search, we managed to put together an extensive list of venues that fit our expectations within a week. Suffice it to say, we managed to do her job better than her.